India plane crash: human error 'could be to blame'

India's civil aviation minister has said that a human error might have caused the crash of an Air India Boeing 737-800 plane that killed 158 people over the weekend.

Locals crowd around the remains of the Air India Express plane that crashed in Mangalore, in the southern Indian state of KarnatakaPhoto: AP

7:35AM BST 24 May 2010

Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel told the CNN-IBN television news channel said weather conditions and other factors at time the plane reached its destination "looked absolutely normal for a regular touchdown and a safe landing."

"You can't rule out a human error factor," Patel said.

Only an inquiry could establish what exactly went wrong as the aircraft overshot the hilltop runway and crashed and plunged over a cliff and into a ravine at dawn Saturday on the outskirts of the southern Indian city of Mangalore, he said.

Of the 166 passengers and crew aboard, only eight people survived the crash.

Mr Patel said there was no rain in the area and visibility was good at the time of the plane's landing.

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Investigators and aviation officials searched through the wreckage of the Boeing 737-800 strewn across a hillside to try to determine the cause of India's worst air disaster in more than a decade. They recovered the cockpit voice recorder which they hope will give them important clues, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

A four-member US forensic team also arrived in India to help in the investigation, said Harpreet Singh, an Air India spokesman.

By Sunday evening, 146 of the 158 bodies had been identified and handed to grieving relatives for burial, said Arvind Jadhav, Air India's chairman and managing director.

Doctors were conducting DNA tests on 22 bodies that were so badly burned that relatives could not identify them, said Suresh Babu, an official at Wenlock hospital in Mangalore. They included a 2-year-old boy.

The black box would be sent to New Delhi for decoding and further investigations, officials said.